Even Bill Clinton reportedly urged Democrats not to "lose their nerve" on the proposed federal controls over health care (like he did). This cheerleading from the Left makes President Obama's recent decision to moderate his position on the Public Option more unpopular with the Left. Many are also disappointed that he has not dropped his campaign positions on other liberal issues. I think it was in "The Audacity of Hope" that he recognized that many people projected their own hopes onto him. He predicted that many people would be disappointed in the future when they found that he did not fully agree with them.
President Obama is an extremely interesting man. A complex man. I don't know that a lot of people understand him well. I would characterize him more as "pragmatic" than "bipartisan". He is not the first president to want to "bring America together". But during the early months of his presidency it seemed to a lot of people on the right that he wanted to "bring America together" around his own ideas, rather than around true compromises. VDH on what might have happened under a bipartisan President Obama.
He ran as a post-partisan and campaigned to the right of John McCain on some issues, including taxes and fiscal responsibility. Many conservatives and libertarians were hoping for a modification of same old approach toward them from liberals. President Obama made some relatively moderate cabinet appointments, which calmed a lot of nerves and his inaugural address hit a lot of conservative points. And to some extent, he has been more moderate than the Democratic Congress. But conservatives and libertarians soon started to feel disappointed concerning Obama's reputation for listening to all sides. There was the refusal to take Republican ideas about the economy seriously, with the explanation that "I won". And his latest "shut up" -type statement.
President Obama's current call for discussion on health care is preferable to the popular liberal approach of "agree with us or we'll crush you". But trust levels in the center and on the right are pretty low. Ann Althouse (who voted for Obama) is skeptical of his language. Many people think President Obama's is engaging in a feigned retreat rather than a real retreat. Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein, who taught in Chicago with Obama, talked about his competitive nature back in April (click the full screen icon for best video quality). President Obama may still come through for the liberals on the healthcare issue.
Seriously, what do liberals expect him to do at this moment, when the majority of Americans think that doing nothing would be preferable to passing the bill(s) now under consideration? Do they really think that people would forget their proposed totalitarian tactics by 2010, if the President actually went forward with them? President Obama is backing off for a reason.
UPDATE: Looks like the proposal to drop the public option was a feint or a trial balloon.
Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.What's with all the Waterloo references lately?
But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.
"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. . .
And besides, the whole "public option" debate is all the fault of the press. This week. Heh.
And if the Democrats can't agree on a Public Option, maybe they can just regulate insurance until it's so unattractive that people will beg for the Publit Option.
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